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Not that engineers and architects do
much hand drawing of plans anymore,
but before the age of CAD/CAM, it was
necessary to have a specific and clear
handwriting style that everyone would
use for the labels in drawings and plans.
Which leads me to this: I just got a job at
a hospital,
sorting and processing the
paper requesition forms that get sent
along with the samples to the lab. We
have to translate the doctor's scribles
into ICD-9-CM codes, and there are all
kinds of legal ramifications to making
any sort of error, or assumption.
Anything that is not legible leads to a
costly process of trying to contact the
doctor (who has much better things to
do) for more information. And that
whole problem is trivial compaired to the
complications caused by misread
prescriptions. I think doctors should be
required to use the standard engineering
style handwriting for any official
documentation that they hand write.
Problem solved.
A prospective study
http://www.bmj.com/archive/7072ww3.htm
In defense of the good doctor [shudderprose, Mar 28 2009]
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Annotation:
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[UB] Is that the guy that wrote all that healthcare oriented organ music? |
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Isn't it to do with personality? Engineers are very serious personalities obsessed with minutiae and one step away from a career in accountancy (I'm basing this on my friend Kerri). Whereas doctors are hard-drinking, rugby-playing, womanizing rebels living on the edge of life and death, who would no more write neatly than they would stop injecting themselves with large doses of diamorphine. |
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There do seem to be a lot of doctors buying Harley-Davidsons these days. So they must be rebels! |
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What psychological disorder causes doctors to write in such a way? |
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Its the DT's from being such dedicated drunks. |
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Its not a psychological disorder, they just don't want you to be able to read; 'bung this hyperchondiac loon half a pound of smarties (U.S. M&Ms) and send him packing' on your perscription. |
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Truly dedicated drunks never get the DTs. |
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Why have the doctors write anything at all? Give 'em a hand-held and have them fill out paperwork wirelessly. |
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goff, I think you should post "healthcare oriented organ music" as a separate idea. |
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A croissant to JP for this well-intentioned and potentially life-saving suggestion. |
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(*goes on JakePatterson bond-buying spree*) |
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A truly excellent idea. But at my GP's, they type the prescriptions on the computer. It reduces the risk of people trying to tamper with the dosage etc, apparently. If this system was widely adopted it would kinda make the handwriting standard redundant. |
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oh dear i want to be an engineer but have terrible handwriting. do they change that on engineering courses or do i have to have my thumbs surgically altered (by someone with even worse handwriting)? |
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I have truly awful handwriting and I'm an engineer. Although not a very good one... |
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the volume of notes might have something to do with it, although I think it was the electric shock I received as a child... |
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Come to think of it, I've always kinda admired doctors... |
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Where does this leave bioengineers? |
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I trained briefly as an engineer and had to study the art
of writing in BS CAPITALS. |
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I was an engineer and could write perfectly well on drawings while still having abysmal handwriting. They are different skills, or maybe different attitudes -- speed has alot to do with it. Therein lies the problem with doctors -- they are all on speed. |
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Excellent! I'd give you a golds star, but i guess you're just going to have to settle for a croissant. |
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I have a friend who is a doctor. He writes joke captions under some of the pictures in his waiting room magazines. Every joke is completely illegible, which is a good thing, since his sense of humor needs work too. |
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doctors' writing is the result of moving ones hand in an agitated manner while thinking about what you might like to write... I would encourage docs to make the first letter legible (then continue as above)... this is especially true for their signature. |
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I vote for this. If you couldn't make it a law, well, I'd guess that insurance companies may give financial incentives to doc's that pass certification. Esp. in the US where malpractice insurance can be $200,000/Dr/Year for some specialties. |
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Someday soon, there is bound to be hand-helds ala "palm"or similar, that have a nice menus. It's not even worth half-baking because there's such a huge real market for it. |
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Like start w/a sketch of a body, and the doc clicks on the area of concern, then clicks on the type of problem, then it auto-recommends 12 diagnoses, click one, then auto-recommends 5 corrective paths (prescription, surgery, rest, instructions), choose one or 2, put it in the master database and printout all necessary documents. I imagine this would work for 80% of the cases they handle. |
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The only barrier to this really is that Doc's would feel offended that 80% of their job could be nearly automated, and they'd be reduced to pressing visual buttons like the McDonald's cashiers. |
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Maybe they LIKE to write messy because it separates them from the hoi polloi. |
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All that said, my handwriting is horrible. I usually just call them "hand-guestures w/ pen" rather than hand-writing. And since I'm an engineer, I would recommend changing the idea's title from "Engineer" to "Certified" to give it more credibility. (Not that it needs it with all the buns.) |
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Having to write a large volume of paperwork would cause their writing to be sloppy, but I suppose terrible penmanship is natural to some. I can say that from personal experience. As I write more I tend to lose what little concern I had for overall legibility, so I can empathize with them. Forcing competent doctors to conform to this would only hamper their ability to work. Why should they be burdened by this mandate? |
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Pharmacists can read a doctor's writing... |
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Not always, and if they're in a rush, they might just have to guess. |
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if they are not sure, they have to telephone and ask! |
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I suspect that half of the doctor’s handwriting thing is to do with confidentiality that and all the tla's they have stolen. A thought just occurred that given that Latin and Greek terms are used could it be to hide poor spelling? |
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I think the term "physician" is better than "doctor" because it removes ambiguity. Concerning the homicide thing, that would depend on everyone being immortal because everybody does actually die in the end, and usually those people have recently been seen by a physician.
I'm a little surprised i haven't commented on this before. There is standard language for medical records and prescriptions. Also, you do have to write incredibly fast and keep eye contact with the patient. It's often important to get things down verbatim, and there are standard forms as well as standard abbreviations and nomenclature. I have it off-pat by now: C/O; HPC; PMH and so on - Complaining Of; History of Presenting Complaint; Previous Medical History...I don't know if doctors/physicians have the same forms as we have, but they definitely have the same nomenclature and abbreviations. In any case, rapport with the patient is more important than any of this. If i looked at the paper while writing, i would miss body language and a whole load of other stuff. I'm doing things like counting respirations and comparing inspiration and expiration ratios and looking for pupillary dilation, goitres, tics, tremor, whatever, and doctors will be doing the same. They have to deal with human beings. I imagine engineering is also in some ways oriented around people in a sort of ergonomic sense, but i don't know how this manifests itself. Maybe differently. |
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Now that I think about it, bad handwriting often means bad motor skills in general. Suddenly I'm having unsettling thoughts about surgeons. |
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I wouldn't worry about them, they hardly even recognise other human beings as people, so they're not the ones with the bad handwriting because they don't generally make any notes. Seriously though, that would depend on how important it is to be quick rather than careful. The reason it's like a spider's trail on the paper because you have to write _really_ fast. Also, a fair amount is in Latin. The kind of motor skills a surgeon needs might be similar to having to write quickly and neatly if they're hacking limbs off an unanæsthetised patient on a battlefield, and when there's ischæmia in vulnerable tissue as a result of what they're doing, but not if they're just doing something trivial like brain surgery. |
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I would like to see examples of this standard handwriting and how it is taught to engineers. |
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Do engineers really use that thing to make each letter? Or do they just get used to writing letter like the template? |
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Good idea [+]. Maybe doctors should type, as [phoenix] said. |
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<troll warning>
//Engineers are very serious personalities obsessed with minutiae and one step away from a career in accountancy// Hmph! I will (help) build the next revolution! What accountant can say that?! (pause for pondering recent news events) Oh...wow, accountants had a pretty big impact. Don't underestimate those accountants. |
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I propose a direct correlation between impact on teh world and obsession with minutiae.
</troll warning> |
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